Weighed in the Balance (20 page)

“It alters everything in the law!” he retorted. “What can I say to make you understand?” He heard desperation rising in his voice. “It seems very likely that we may be able to give serious evidence to the theory that Friedrich was murdered. His symptoms are closer to yew poison than internal bleeding. We may even be able to force an exhumation of his body and an autopsy.” He saw her wince of distaste with satisfaction. “But even if that proves us correct, Gisela was the one person who had no access to yew leaves. She never left his side. For heaven’s sake, ma’am, if you believe he was assassinated for some political reason, say so! Don’t sacrifice your own reputation by making a charge against the one person who cannot be guilty, simply in order to force the matter to justice!”

“What do you suggest?” she asked, her voice tense, cracking a little under the strain of effort to be light. “That I accuse Klaus von Seidlitz? But he is not guilty!”

She was still standing, the firelight reflecting red on her skirt. It was growing dark outside.

“You know it was not Klaus. You have no proof it was Gisela.” Hope suddenly lifted inside him. “Then withdraw the charge, and we will investigate until we have enough evidence, then we’ll take it to the police! Tell the truth! Say you believe he was murdered but you don’t know by whom. You named Gisela simply to make someone listen to you and investigate. Apologize to her. Say you now realize you were wrong to suspect her, and you hope she will forgive your error of judgment and join with everyone to discover the truth. She can hardly refuse to do that. Or she will indeed look as if she may have colluded. I will draw up a statement for you.”

“You will not!” she said fiercely, her eyes hot and stubborn. “We shall go to trial.”

“But we don’t have to!” Why was the woman so obtuse? She was going to cause such unnecessary pain to herself! “Monk will learn everything he can—”

“Good!” She swung around and stared towards the window. “Then let him do it by the time we meet in court, and he can testify for me.”

“That may not be in time …”

“Then tell him to hurry!”

“Withdraw the charge against Gisela. Then the trial will not take place. She may ask damages, but I can plead on your behalf so that—”

She jerked back to glare at him. “Are you refusing to take my instructions. Sir Oliver? That is the right term, is it not? Instructions.”

“I am trying to advise you—” he said desperately.

“And I have heard your advice and declined it,” she cut across him. “I do not seem able to make you understand that I believe Gisela killed Friedrich and I am not going to accuse someone else as a device. A device, I may add, which I do not believe would work.”

“But she did not kill him.” His voice was getting louder and more strident than he wished, but she was trying him to exasperation. “You cannot prove something which is not true! And I will not be party to trying.”

“I believe it is true,” she said inflexibly, her face set, body rigid. “And it is not your calling to be judge as well as counsel, is it?”

He took a deep breath. “It is my obligation to tell you the truth … which is that if Friedrich was indeed murdered, by the use of yew leaves, then Gisela is the one person whose actions and whereabouts are accounted for at all times, and she could not have killed him.”

She stared at him defiantly, her chin high, her eyes wide. But
she had no answer to his logic. It beat her, and she had to acknowledge it.

“If you wish to be excused, Sir Oliver, then I excuse you. You need not consider your honor stained. I seem to have asked of you more than is just.”

He felt an overwhelming relief, and was ashamed of it

“What will you do?” he asked gently, the tension and the sense of doom skipping away from him, but in their place was a whisper of failure, as if some opportunity had been lost, and even a sort of loneliness.

“If you see the situation as you have said, no doubt any other barrister of like skill and honor will see it the same way,” she answered. “They will advise me as you have. And then I shall have to reply to them as I have to you, so I shall have gained nothing. There is only one person who believes in the necessity of pursuing the case.”

“Who is that?” He was surprised. He could imagine no one.

“I, of course.”

“You cannot represent yourself!” he protested.

“There is no alternative that I am prepared to accept.” She stared at him with a very slight smile, irony and amusement mixed in it—and behind it, fear.

“Then I shall continue to represent you, unless you prefer me not to.” He was horrified as he heard his own voice. It was rash to a degree. But he could hardly abandon her to her fate, even if she had brought it upon herself.

She smiled ruefully, full of gratitude.

“Thank you, Sir Oliver.”

“That was most unwise,” Henry Rathbone said gravely. He was leaning against the mantelshelf in his sitting room. The French doors were no longer open onto the garden, and there was a brisk fire burning in the hearth. He looked unhappy. Oliver had just told him of his decision to defend Zorah in spite of the fact that she refused absolutely to withdraw her accusation or to
make any sort of accommodation to sense, or even to her own social survival, possibly to her financial survival also.

Oliver did not want to repeat the details of the discussion. It sounded, in retrospect, as if he had been precipitate, governed far more by emotion than intelligence, a fault he deplored in others.

“I don’t see any honorable alternative,” he said stubbornly. “I cannot simply leave her. She has put herself in a completely vulnerable position.”

“And you with her,” Henry added. He sighed and moved away from the front of the fire, where he was beginning to be uncomfortable. He sat down and fished his pipe out of his jacket pocket. He knocked the pipe against the fireplace, cleaned out the bowl, then filled it with tobacco again. He put it in his mouth and lit it. It went out almost immediately, but he did not seem to care.

“We must see what can be salvaged out of the situation.” He looked steadily at Oliver. “I don’t think you appreciate how deeply people’s feelings run in this sort of issue.”

“Slander?” Oliver asked with surprise. “I doubt it. And if murder is proved, then she will to some extent be justified.” He was comfortable in his usual chair at the other side of the fire. He slid down a little farther in it. “I think that is the thrust I must take, prove that there is sufficient evidence to believe that a crime has been committed. Possibly in the emotion, the shock and outrage of learning that Friedrich was murdered, albeit for political reasons, they will overlook Zorah’s charge against Gisela.” His spirits lifted a little as he said it. It was the beginning of a sensible approach instead of the blank wall he had faced even a few minutes ago.

“No, I did not mean slander,” Henry replied, taking his pipe out of his mouth but not bothering to relight it. He held it by the bowl, pointing with it as he spoke. “I meant the challenging of people’s preconceptions of certain events and characters, their beliefs, which have become part of how they see the world and
their own value in it. If you force people to change their minds too quickly, they cannot readjust everything, and they will blame you for their discomfort, the sense of confusion and loss of balance.”

“I think you are overstating the case,” Oliver said firmly. “There are very few people so unsophisticated as to imagine women never kill their husbands, or that minor European royal families are so very different from the rest of us very fallible human beings. Certainly I will not have many on my jury. They will be men of the world, by definition.” He found himself smiling. “The average juror is a man of property and experience, Father. He may be very sober in his appearance, even pompous in his manner, but he has few illusions about the realities of life, of passion and greed and occasionally of violence.”

Henry sighed. “He is also a man with a vested interest in the social order as it is, Oliver. He respects his betters and aspires to be like them, even to become one of them, should fortune allow. He does not like the challenging of the good and the decent, which form the framework of the order he knows and give him his place and his value, which makes sure his inferiors respect him in the same way.”

“Therefore, he will not like murder,” Oliver said reasonably. “Most particularly, he will not accept the murder of a prince. He will want to see it exposed and avenged.”

Henry relit his pipe absentmindedly. His brow was furrowed with anxiety. “He will not like lawyers who defend people who make such charges against a great romantic heroine,” he corrected. “He will not like women, such as Zorah Rostova, who defy convention by not marrying, by traveling alone in all sorts of foreign lands; who dress inappropriately and ride astride a horse and smoke cigars.”

“How do you know she does those things?” Oliver was startled.

“Because people are already beginning to talk about it.” Henry leaned forward, the pipe going out again. “For heaven’s
sake, don’t you suppose the gossip is running around London like smuts from a chimney in a high wind? People have believed in the love story of Friedrich and Gisela for over a decade. They don’t want to think they have been deluded, and they will resent anyone who tries to tell them so.”

Oliver felt the warmth of his earlier optimism begin to drain out of him.

“Attacking royalty is a very dangerous thing,” Henry went on. “I know a great many people do it, especially in newspapers and broadsheets, and always have, but it has seldom made them liked among the sort of people you care about. Her Majesty has just recognized your services to justice. You are a knight, and a Queen’s Counsel, not a political pamphleteer.”

“That is all the more reason why I cannot allow a murder to go unquestioned,” Oliver said grimly, “simply because I shall not be popular for drawing everyone’s attention to it.” He had placed himself in a position from which it was impossible to withdraw with any grace at all. And his father was only making it worse. He looked across at the older man’s earnest face and knew that his father was afraid for him, struggling to see an escape and unable to.

Oliver sighed. His anger evaporated, leaving only fear.

“Monk is going to Felzburg. He thinks it was probably a political assassination, perhaps by Klaus von Seidlitz, in order to prevent Friedrich from returning to lead the struggle for independence, which could very easily end in war.”

“Then let’s hope he brings proof of it,” Henry replied. “And that Zorah will then apologize, and you can persuade a jury to be lenient with the damages they award,”

Oliver said nothing. The fire settled in a shower of sparks, and he found he was cold.

Hester was now sure beyond all but the slimmest hope that Robert Ollenheim would not walk again. The doctor had not
said so to Bernd or Dagmar, but he had not argued when Hester had challenged him in the brief moment they had alone.

She wanted to escape from the house for a while to compose her thoughts before she faced their recognition of the truth. She knew their pain would be profound, and she felt inadequate to help. All the words she thought of sounded condescending, because in the end she could not share the hurt. What is there to say to a mother whose son will not stand or walk or run again, who will never dance or ride a horse, who will never even leave his bedroom unaided? What do you say to a man whose son will not follow in his footsteps, who will never be independent, who will never have sons of his own to carry on the name and the line?

She asked permission to leave on a personal errand, and when willingly granted it, she took a hansom east across the city to Vere Street and asked Simms if she might see Sir Oliver, if he had a few moments to spare.

She did not have long to wait; within twenty minutes she was shown in. Rathbone was standing in the middle of the room. There were several large books open on the desk, as if he had been searching for some reference. He looked tired. There were lines of stress around his eyes and mouth, and his fair hair was combed a little crookedly, a most unusual occurrence for him. His clothes were as immaculate as always, and as perfectly tailored, but he did not stand as straight.

“My dear Hester, how delightful to see you,” he said with a pleasure which caught her with a sudden warmth. He closed the book in his hand and set it on the desk with the others. “How is your patient?”

“Much recovered in his health,” she replied truthfully enough. “But I fear he will not walk again. How is your case?”

His face was filled with concern. “Not walk again! Then his recovery is only very partial?”

“I am afraid that is almost certainly so. But please, I should prefer not to speak of it. We cannot help. How is your case
going? Have you heard from Venice? Is Monk learning anything useful?”

“If he has, I am afraid he is so far keeping it to himself.” He indicated the chair opposite, and then sat at the corner of the desk himself, swinging his leg a trifle, as if he were too restless to sit properly.

“But he has written?” she urged.

“Three times, in none of them telling me anything I could use in court. Now he is off to Felzburg to see what he can learn there.”

It was not only the total lack of any helpful news which worried her, but the anxiety in Rathbone’s eyes, the way his fingers played with the corner of a sheaf of papers. It was not like him to fiddle pointlessly with things. He was probably not even aware he was doing it. She was unexpectedly angry with Monk for not having found anything helpful, for not being there to share the worry and the mounting sense of helplessness. But panic would not serve anyone. She must keep a calm head and think rationally.

“Do you believe Countess Rostova is honest in her charge?” she asked.

He hesitated only a moment. “Yes, I do.”

“Could she be correct that Gisela murdered her husband?”

“No.” He shook his head. “She is the one person who did not have the opportunity. She never left his side after his accident.”

“Never?” she said with surprise.

“Apparently not. She nursed him herself. I imagine one does not leave a seriously ill patient alone?”